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About this project

Roger and I made Armada for the Dreamcast to provide an experience people could share. With Armada Online, we have banded with people from all over the world to craft our dream game. Join us in bringing Armada Online to life as a shared experience, and as a development engine capable of supporting new experimental game types.

--Mark & Roger

[We live month to month, doing gaming contract work. Sometimes we get paid, sometimes we don’t. If we meet our funding goal, we get about $16k each to work with through a year of development and launch. The rest goes to server fees and one contract artist. I realize we have a lot to show, but there is still a long way to go.]

Armada Online is an action rpg, which means that you control a single starship, but play a powerful role in larger events. In the future, you will get an epic story about giant biomechanical aliens that threaten to destroy humanity's aspirations to explore space, but here are some things about the game that make it awesome right now:

Multiplayer: Join with others to fight the Armada, and defend your freedom to travel.

Varied Tactics: From moment to moment, you must adapt to respond to exotic biomechanical aliens. Some aliens must be struck in vulnerable spots, some explode or split into smaller creatures when killed, some enhance other enemies or have countermeasures for some of your special weapons and are good targets to deal with first.

Interesting Strategy: Armada Online offers a variety of special battle zones that present a highly replayable series of interesting choices. Whether you place stations to defend your Starbase against an incoming horde of massive biomechs, or play against coordinated teams of enemy players, you have to keep your eyes peeled between the mini map and close range combat, balancing broad strategy with tactical control.

Deep Customization: Armada Online offers players many choices to build up a captain and a starship that reflects their unique personality and play style. You might play as a speedy teleporting support ship, with precision weapons that can warp enemies away from you, or fire beams to destroy incoming enemy missiles. You can be a stealth operator that cloaks allies, removes enemies from play for a short time, or you may prefer to pilot a giant robot that charges into close combat wielding twin energy swords.

We are raising money to pay for server upgrade costs and game development. In the long-term, we would like to expand Armada Online, remake Armada 1 with AO resources, give you more games, and support other developers. Being funded makes a lot possible.

We understand that people have to be selective about what projects they pledge for. There are many ways to support Armada Online beyond financial contributions.

Playing the game is a huge help. Thanks to the player community, Armada Online has a solid core and is already fun to play, but we need more players to truly test our systems. Even if our project drops like a stone on Kickstarter, if you happen to be here reading this, please give the game a shot. I can strongly recommend The Burn as a unique take on tower defense. So much of the game is highly replayable, and something fun you can do with a group of friends, that you can play for years and still discover something new.

It is easy to jump to areas that interest you. Press "W" to bring up a Warp Map and instantly travel anywhere. We recommend replaying Haven a few times, when first starting out. In sector Delta 3, you can press "P" to see the players in the zone, and target them to warp to any one of them. The Neutral Zone is a fun pvp zone. Use this build order the first time you play it to get a sense for the surge of power possible in that area:

Like with many indie games, one of our biggest challenges is simply letting people know we exist. Showing your support and interest for Armada Online on Steam Greenlight will help us reach a larger audience, give us early access to tools, and give us a powerful means of promotion and distribution.

If you don't have a PC that can run the game, we will definitely be releasing on other systems later. Mac and Linux are likely. Ouya seems interesting. We made a free android game (2 player on one device, simple arcade-style game to test # of shots/entities possible on phones) that can run on 2.2 phone, and is also quite fun on a tablet:

You can type "/resolution 1440x900" or "/resolution 1280x1024" in the in-game chat window to change to that resolution. Later on, we will support more resolutions (1920x1080) and more display controls.

Rewards

You selected

$12 reward

21 backers

EXPLORER: Gain access to the Beta, and a digital download of the full final release game. Receive backer desktops and a digital art book covering early alien designs, production sketches, concept art, and high res renders of our 3D aliens. All backers will be given credit in the game and our sincere thanks for their help in making this project a reality.

Estimated delivery:Dec 2012

You selected

$24 reward

38 backers

CAPTAIN: Digital download of all updates and expansions. Digital download of the musical score, special player portrait options, and an animated art pack, plus early access to the remake of Armada 1 (when we get to that). [+all above rewards.]

Estimated delivery:Dec 2012

You selected

$48 reward

22 backers

SURVIVOR: Gain early access to Tier 4 ship upgrades. Gain early access to the release server. Your account will be added to the SuperTester list, and be backed up on three backup servers. We do not plan on purging test accounts, but this one account will for certain not be purged. [+all above rewards.]

Estimated delivery:Dec 2012

You selected

$99 reward

25 backers

ELITE: Upgrade one account to an Elite account. Elite accounts have 6 extra character slots and an optional Commander flag that can be activated when logging in. Commanders can choose to appear on a dedicated page of the friends list seen by all players. [+all above rewards.]

Estimated delivery:Dec 2012

You selected

$1,000 reward

0 backers

DEVELOPER: Receive digital 3D models and special effects art resources from AO, plus all art assets from Armada Arcade (android). If you want to develop a mobile or flash game and have at least one programmer on your team, we will help you complete a commercial game using our art and music resources (if you want), at our discretion and within reason. If multiple people sign up for this and are interested, we can help you collaborate and share data. [+all above rewards.]

Estimated delivery:Dec 2012

You selected

$8,000 reward

0 backers
Limited (3 left of 3)

PATRON: Receive currently unreleased mobile client/server source code capable of supporting a game similar to Armada Online. We will help you get your game made. This is an unlimited mobile client server code license. It can be used for a wide variety of multiplayer game types. You can use it to make an infinite number of games without any further cost. You do not need to give us credit in your game if you are just using our server code. [+all above rewards.]

Estimated delivery:Dec 2012

You selected

$10,000 reward

0 backers

BOOSTER: Talk to us about what custom reward you might like. In addition to whatever you have in mind, I can do a high res digital game character painting of you based on photo references you send me. You can become a character in the campaign missions if you want. [+all above rewards, including Patron code license.]

Estimated delivery:Dec 2012

Funding period

Sep 17, 2012 - Nov 16, 2012
(60 days)

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